Traditionally, content such as music and movies was packaged in physical media such as records and cassette tapes. Consumers were accustomed to convenience in enjoying content they purchased; they were able to access their content any time of day and were able to take their content with them wherever they traveled. Content was typically organized on shelves and accessed like books. With the advent of computers and digital content, content was packaged in storage media such as CDs, player devices and computer disks. CDs were organized on shelves and content stored in player devices and computer disks was organized as files and folders.
More recently with the advent of content streaming, consumers are now having content played to them as live broadcasts from content servers. The shift in paradigm from physically packaged content to content that is not stored on a consumer device, but instead streamed for playing, has been largely perceived by consumers as limiting. Despite the advantage of having access to enormous collections of content stored on content servers, consumers still prefer to have something physical in hand with content stored thereon, be it a CD or a player device or a computer.
Consumer preference to have content physically in hand is a carryover from the tradition of the home being a consumer's central archive, where he enjoys his music and from where he takes the music of his choice with him when he is away from the home. In order to attract a consumer to the idea of remote content servers being his archive, in addition to or instead of his home, compelling new services must be offered that surpass the traditional services.